Trump, who just a few days ago complimented North Korea, offered no further details of any planned meeting or talks to hold one.
“The fact that I get along with him, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons,” Trump said during an event at at the White House, referring to Kim.
“Should’ve never allowed it to happen. They should’ve never allowed it, if I were president, I wouldn’t have allowed it. But he’s got them. I get along with him very well,” the president added.
It's unclear if Trump's claims hold any water, as the Kim's younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, said Wednesday that North Korea's position toward the U.S. had not changed, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea, noting that Seoul refused to help the U.S. with its military operations in Iran and that he has a friendly “relationship” with Kim.
The U.S.-South Korea military exercises are annual, large-scale defense drills that happen in the spring and summer to help reinforce the alliance between the two countries and the readiness to battle regional threats.
“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” the president wrote.
Trump first met with Kim in 2018 during his first term after threatening "fire and fury" if North Korea continued provocative ballistic missile tests. At the meeting - the first-ever between leaders of the United States and North Korea - the two sides signed a joint statement, agreeing to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, among other things.
Afterward, Trump repeatedly boasted of his friendship with the dictator, but North Korea continued its nuclear ambitions, causing diplomatic relations to fall apart in 2019.
Read the full report at thehill.com.
